Elon Musk always keeps it interesting and manages to get great press doing so. Announcing this weekend that he will ship his personal Tesla red roadster to Mars is just another example of this.

Musk has always said they like to put unique things on each launch and by doing this he will never see his Roadster again. We can't find the information about the red Roadster during all the publicity, but if memory serves from a book we read, the Roadster was Elon's personal car from the beginning days of Tesla Motors. Those cars initially were plagued with a lot of problems, but we can assume if it's that same car, it's very personal to him.

Musk took to Twitter to say:

"Payload will be my midnight cherry Tesla Roadster playing Space Oddity. Destination is Mars orbit. Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn’t blow up on ascent."



We've been looking forward to the launch, now set for January of 2018 and plan to drive north from south Florida to get a little closer to this historic event.

When Falcon Heavy lifts off in 2018, it will be the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two. With the ability to lift into orbit over 54 metric tons (119,000 lb)--a mass equivalent to a 737 jetliner loaded with passengers, crew, luggage, and fuel--Falcon Heavy can lift more than twice the payload of the next closest operational vehicle, the Delta IV Heavy, at one-third the cost.



Falcon Heavy draws upon the proven heritage and reliability of Falcon 9. Its first stage is composed of three Falcon 9 nine-engine cores whose 27 Merlin engines together generate more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, equal to approximately eighteen 747 aircraft. Only the Saturn V moon rocket, last flown in 1973, delivered more payload to orbit. Falcon Heavy was designed from the outset to carry humans into space and restores the possibility of flying missions with a crew to the Moon or Mars.